Two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft N905NA

The N905NA Shuttle Carrier Aircraft fine art print is part of NASA: Past and Present Dreams of the Future, a nine-year documentary series by British photographer Benedict Redgrove. This large-format archival print captures the modified Boeing 747 that once carried the Space Shuttle across the United States, photographed with technical camera precision.

The Artist

Benedict Redgrove is a British artist and photographer known for treating engineered objects as sculptures. For this NASA project, he spent five years negotiating unprecedented access, then four years shooting inside the Lunar Samples Lab, mission control, and the assembly rooms where next-generation spacecraft are built. The result is a body of work that lets each object tell its own story, from Apollo-era moon rocks to Space Shuttle-era hardware.

The Piece

This print features one of the two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft ever built. N905NA came into service in 1974, first for wake-vortex research, then as the piggyback platform for the Space Shuttle program. Originally an American Airlines 747, it was rebuilt to carry an orbiter on its back, and the photograph captures that duality: commercial airliner turned space-program workhorse, wearing the red worm NASA logo. Shot on technical cameras with digital backs, some frames in the series stack more than 60 exposures to hold every rivet, panel line and reflection in focus. The final fine art print is produced on archival paper for gallery-grade tonal depth.

Specifications

• Artist: Benedict Redgrove
• Series: NASA // Past and Present Dreams of the Future
• Subject: Shuttle Carrier Aircraft N905NA
• Medium: Archival fine art print
• Capture: Technical camera with digital back, multi-exposure composites
• Print sizes (inches): 37.5 x 50, 32 x 60

Discover the full NASA by Benedict Redgrove collection at TheArsenale.